Seven Nights, Seven Loves
by Lavender and Hay
Summary: The seven loves of Elsie Hughes.
1. Chapter 1

**I'm not sure where this challenge has come from, I can't find it, but I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon and do The Seven Loves of Elsie Hughes.**

**Seven Nights, Seven Loves**

**1.**

She was born in the middle of the night. Elsie was there, it was one of her first clear memories for a number of reasons.

She remembers the strangeness of it all, all the men seemed to have vanished; her father, her older brother; her uncle. She wasn't usually awake this late, anyway. There was bustle, confusion. Everyone seemed to forget that she was there so she loiters in the corner of her mother's bedroom by the table she is no taller than, unnoticed.

Her aunt took charge. She remembers the fear of seeing, hearing her mother's pain, of not being sure what's causing it. Frightened, yet unwilling to move, in the strange childish belief that if she is there things can't get too bad. Shadows from the fire in the corner of the room stretch and dance about her.

She remembers drifting hazily to sleep, sitting there against the wall in the corner, exhausted by all of this horror and activity.

By the time she wakes up, everything is quiet. Activity has lulled. Fear floods her small body once more; it is only now that she realises that the commotion held some comfort for her. Then she is noticed: by her Grandmother, sitting in a chair at her mother's bedside.

"Elsie," she says, "Come and meet Anne. Come and meet your little sister."

She advances timidly. Her mother, she realises, is not dead, but just propped up rather weakly. And holding something in her arms. Grandma lifts her to sit on the bed. Her mother pats her softly on the head, and it is only then that she realises that her curly black hair is sticking out at all angles.

She peers at the little face between the blankets, this sign that the horror is past and all is well. And she loves it, with every fibre of her three-year-old being.


	2. Chapter 2

**2. First Love**

Elsie is popular, there's no doubt about it. She catches the eye of most of the lads who come to work on her father's farm. They wink at her and she roars with laughter; because of course she hasn't a care in the world about any one of them in particular. Her dear mother shakes her head and says she'll be the death of her and that she ought to watch herself. Elsie doesn't pay the slightest bit of attention, and poor Mam generally retreats, hoping she'll have grown out of it by the time Anne's at that stage; she couldn't be having with the two of them at once.

But there is one, one exception to prove every rule as it were. The one she takes quite a fancy to, the one she does have a care about. And of course, he doesn't notice her at all. Chats amiably with her, but doesn't notice the adoration in her eyes by any means.

He's strongly built, taller than most of the rest of them and two years older than she is. Of course, he comes back year after year- her Dad's not a harsh employer. And from her being thirteen to sixteen he doesn't notice her at all.

But then there is one night; one night in the village there's a party, a new baby had just been born and people were celebrating. It's autumn and getting cold; some of the men make a bonfire for them to keep warm by. There's singing and dancing and everyone is in high spirits.

She sits beside him on the grass; they're friends at least after seeing each other every year. And finally, finally, she feels as if he's looking at her differently. And he kisses her, there on the grass in the dancing light from the fire.

For days afterwards she walks with a spring in her step.

**Please review if you have the time.**


	3. Chapter 3

**3. Romantic Love (with an odd sort of slant to it, I hope it makes sense). And not set at night either. Call it an odd one out.**

Elsie thinks she might just love Joe. Yes, she probably does. He's as good a man as ever she's met. She's known him for ten years- since she was twenty- and as far as she knows, he's liked her all of this time. And now, as soon as there's the smallest sign of her going away; he's asked her, implored her, to marry him.

He's always been a bit like that, really. He likes his romantic gestures, in his own small way. Three years ago when he wanted to start courting her, he knocked on her father's door to ask his permission, and handed her a bunch of flowers from one of his fields. He takes care to offer her his arm if they walk any where, he always lets her through doors before himself. Of course, it you just be common courtesy- her mother insists that it is and, says she's foolish to be suspicious of it. But of course, Elsie was never one to listen to anyone- especially when her own convictions were so strong.

The thing is that Elsie is not one for romantic gestures, not in the least. She has her own deep-seated conviction that love should not be about the gestures, but the intensity of real feeling behind them. They do well enough for those who like them, but a marriage couldn't be built on them.

"Intensity of feeling!" her Mam says, torn between amusement and horror, "Intensity of feeling won't keep you fed, with a roof over your head! If you had the ounce of sense you were born with, you'd take Mr Burns- he's a good man- and have done with it!"

He _was _a good man, and that wasn't making Elsie feel any better with herself. But as for the roof over her head, she had seen to that, she was going to be head housemaid at a place in Yorkshire, for Heaven's sake!

She can't marry Joe, not in good conscience. She can't tie herself to a way of life on the basis of a few well-meant but half-hearted romantic gestures. She loves him for his goodness, for his decency, but she's not in love. And to her that makes all the difference.

**Please review if you have the time. I will try to update my Old Socialist fic tomorrow. **


	4. Chapter 4

**And so it begins: the Carson/Hughes.**

**4. One-sided Love**

Elsie feels glum. By and large she's happy here, she's good at being a housemaid, certainly, and most of the people are nice enough, but this evening, she's glum. Perhaps that the people here are nice is part of the problem. The family are away for the evening and most of the staff have taken the chance to go down to the Grantham Arms, but she wasn't in the mood for it. Alone at the servants' hall table, she sits quietly with half a cup of tea, listening to the tick-tock of the clock.

She ought to perk up a bit, she ought not to dwell on it, she ought to forget all about it, but it's easier said than done. It's not like he'd ever notice her anyway.

In fact, she knows he hasn't. Mr Carson is a good, decent man and surely knows how unwise it would be to have a relationship with a housemaid. And, even before they came to that, she doubted that he'd want to. She doesn't usually lament her lack traditional beauty- she doesn't quite carry her looks as gracefully as young Lady Grantham, similar though they are- but she really could endure looking like that if only it would make him look at her.

It's ludicrous, she's spent a large proportion of her life trying to disentangle herself from various young men, and now she couldn't possibly wish to be more... entangled.

But that's what she likes; the difference. He doesn't presume, like other men did, that she'd want him. Perhaps the thought hasn't even entered his head. He's quiet, he keeps to himself, and it makes her want all the more to be allowed in. Reticence is beautiful in him. She smiles weakly at her cup. Her mother always said it would end in tears; the poetic nonsense she tried to talk.

She knows the most sensible option would be to find a footman- plenty would surely take her- and dash around, behind Mr Carson's own back, having a frantic affair until she'd worked it off. She can't. For a start, she doubts very much that it would work.

**Please review if you have the time.**


	5. Chapter 5

**5. Lust**

Well, he has noticed her, she remarks rather dryly to herself, stretching her arms around his neck and pulling him towards her. Otherwise, why would he be here? Does she really want an honest answer to that question? She knows he's lonely. In the year that she's been housekeeper and she's been allowed more into his confidence, if there's one thing that she's learned about him it's that he's lonely beyond anything else but very very good at hiding it. He's very good at hiding anything, it seems.

On his part, she acknowledges, this is probably not much more than a slip-up. He respects her as a colleague, maybe as a friend, but she's not sure that he feels for her the way she does for him. She was sure he didn't until ten minutes ago. She pushes that thought away, kissing him frantically.

She has tried to comfort him in every other away. This is the very least she can do. She's loved him constantly, unwaveringly, silently for long enough. No matter what this is to him- or isn't- she isn't going to pass on this chance now.

His arms are wrapped tightly around her. Her head is spinning. Even if she wanted to stop now, she doubts she could; the lust, the desire has kicked in. She lets him take her dress off, her corset off.

"Lie down, Elsie," he tells her.

Good, he's not asking her permission. She doesn't want him to have second thoughts, she needs this very much now. His weight above her is very comforting, there is a temporary sense of permanence about it. But he doesn't move into her yet, though it's what she's expecting. His hand plays at her breast as he kisses her collar bone. She bites her lip until she can't help herself any more and moans.

She can't quite bring herself to believe it; though it's all very hurried, he's still taking his time with her, as it were. This is why, she reminds herself, she loves him. Perhaps, it's not to much to hope that he might love her back after all. She can feel it building up inside her.

"Charles," she manages, "You'd best-..."

She hopes she doesn't have to spell it out for him.

"Are you sure?" he asks.

It's amazing that the question she was dreading minutes ago, makes her so happy now. She bites her lip and nods fervently.

When she finally calms back down, much later on, she lies silently. She can't think of anything to say, even if she trusted her voice. It was not at all what she'd been told to expect- "Lie back and think of England" her mother had told her, obviously forgetting that they were Scottish. She plays with his hair, affectionately.

She waits until she's completely cold before she says it. She wants him to know that it's not just a thing said in the heat of the moment, like a side effect.

"Charles, I love you."

**Please review if you have the time. **


	6. Chapter 6

**6. Doomed Love**

It was never going to work out well, she should have known that from the start. Perhaps she did on some level, and she she still went ahead with it. It was foolish, silly, and the easiest thing in the world; to take another woman's son and begin gradually- almost so she did not notice it happening- to look on him as her own.

She'd always had a funny thing about relationships: when her mother encouraged her to accept Joe, she had shied away from doing so, and when propriety and reason couldn't have been more set against her affair with Charles, she threw herself into it whole-heartedly. The more she told herself that William was not hers to mother, the more she found herself doing just that.

It had seemed so simple at the time. She had always regretted that their circumstances hadn't allowed her and Charles to have a child. He was there, pining none too silently- well, not that he was trying to draw attention to himself, but he certainly didn't hide it well enough for her to be able to overlook it- for a sense of family, and there she was only too willing to provide one.

No one quite knows where they stand in relationships that are by and large unspoken, surely she should have remembered that. She was more than willing to stick up for him, to Charles, to that vile boy Thomas, even to his Lordship if necessary; she was willing to listen to him talk about missing his life at home if he wanted to. Only he didn't know that, and she was wary of telling him in case he felt as if she thought he wasn't coping very well. Not only that, she was frightened of him knocking her back by telling her he doesn't need her.

So she's left there, really quite hopeless, listening from behind the door in the evenings as he presses the keys of the piano in a sad kind of way, unable to offer to tell him that she's there for him. That she loves him.

**Please review if you have the time.**


	7. Chapter 7

**7. True Love**

She was so in love with him. It felt bland and insincere put like that, but she was. She was more in love than she'd ever have thought she could be. Back in the days when she was walking out with Joe, she was convinced that their lack of genuine passion was something wanting on her part. She thought it was some fault in her character that wouldn't let her really be open with him, or even to try to really feel for him. She realised now how very wrong she had been. She loved the man curled beside her, in her bed, more than she loved anything in the world.

Of course, she could kill him sometimes. He drove her up the wall. He was obstinate, stubborn, so convinced of his own opinion. He wouldn't take a telling and he certainly would never admit she was right, which she often was. But still, she loved him.

It was fair to say that she knew Charles Carson very well. You got to know a person pretty well when you spent every moment you thought you could in their company, often letting them kiss you, often smoothing the creases in their brow with your palm. Especially when it went on for ten years. Fifteen years.

She believed everything he said to her. And if she did not believe it, she believed that he was kidding himself as well as her. She loved him for the support he offered her, when more of ten than not he was just as in need of support himself. She loved him for the way he always thought of her first. She wished he wouldn't, it smacked of him valuing her more than he valued himself, but nevertheless she still loved him for it. She loved the way held her on the nights they did have together.

This was true love. And it was as near to being perfect as she'd ever known human love to be.

**Please review if you have the time.**


End file.
